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Two New CBO Reports on Health Care Issues
Congressional Budget Office Peter R. Orszag "Director's Blog" —
... The first document, Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals, focuses on large-scale proposals, provides extensive background information, and explains CBO’s analysis of numerous issues that could arise should the Congress seek to enact major changes in the health insurance system. Key Issues does not provide analyses of specific proposals; rather, it provides an overview of CBO’s approach to major questions and issues that would likely arise in the context of such legislation. Its main conclusions are as follows: ...
You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat
Cato @ Liberty —
... much-anticipated reports on health care today. I’m just on the first page of the first report and already I found this gem: ...
Hearing on expanding health insurance coverage and controlling health care costs
Congressional Budget Office Peter R. Orszag "Director's Blog" —
Yesterday I testified before the Senate Budget Committee about CBO’s recent health volumes, Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals and Budget Options Volume 1: Health Care.
Congress faces both opportunities and challenges in pursuing two major policy goals: (1) expanding health insurance coverage, so that more Americans receive appropriate health care without undue financial burden, and (2) making the health care system more efficient, so that it can continue to improve Americans’ health but at a lower cost in ...
Testifying before Senate Finance on CBO’s Health Volumes
Congressional Budget Office Peter R. Orszag "Director's Blog" —
... , and Budget Options for Health Care. The first examines the principal elements of reform plans that would affect our estimates of the effect of such plans on federal costs, insurance coverage, and other outcomes. The second comprises 115 discrete options to alter federal programs, affect the private health insurance market, or both. These two reports are the culmination of a tremendous effort by many people at CBO as we’ve redoubled our capacity to analyze these complex issues. (I was recently asked to testify about these volumes before the Senate Budget ...
Health Care Reform and the Federal Budget
Congressional Budget Office Peter R. Orszag "Director's Blog" —
... & Budget Options, Volume I). When CBO evaluates policies, the agency aims to reflect the middle of the range of expert opinion about likely outcomes. For any particular policy option, CBO carefully reviews the relevant empirical evidence and examines the incentives that would be created to control costs and the factors that might limit the success of those incentives. At this point, experts do not know exactly how to structure such reforms so as to reduce federal spending on health care significantly in the long run without harming people’s health. ...
Meeting at the White House
Congressional Budget Office Peter R. Orszag "Director's Blog" —
... last month. I also described CBO’s view of the effects of the health legislation we have seen so far, as I did last Thursday in a hearing at the Senate Budget Committee and a mark-up at the House Ways and Means Committee. In addition, I discussed various policy options that could produce budgetary savings in the long run, drawing on CBO’s Budget Options for Health Care released in December, our letter to Senators Conrad and Gregg last month, and my comments last Thursday. Other participants in the meeting expressed their own ...
Budget Options, Volume 2
Congressional Budget Office Peter R. Orszag "Director's Blog" —
... CBO regularly presents compendiums of budget options to help inform Members of Congress about the effects that various policy choices would have on spending or revenues. For the current budget cycle, CBO has issued Budget Options in two volumes. The first volume, released in December 2008, focused on options regarding health care and its financing. The ...
Pharmaceutical R&D and the Evolving Market for Prescription Drugs
Congressional Budget Office Peter R. Orszag "Director's Blog" —
... The federal government finances a large and growing share of prescription drug sales, and it faces severe long-term budgetary pressures, with rising health care costs playing a key role. CBO’s brief discusses a number of policy options for reducing those costs or for expanding insurance coverage that would affect the market for prescription drugs. Those options—some of them detailed in the Congressional Budget Office’s December 2008 report, Budget Options, Volume 1: Health Care—include: ...
